Inventory management in retail and commercial buildings is a complex, time-consuming, and expensive issue. Large stores can carry more than 10,000 items on shelves, and these items must be tagged, tracked, displayed, restocked, and priced on a regular basis to ensure product availability to customers.
Inventory stocking is the process of placing items out on shelves or in displays such that they can be purchased by customers. Restocking is the process of replenishing items that have been purchased, moved, stolen, or damaged. Stocking and restocking are time-consuming tasks, since they normally entail the detailed review of all products for sale. Traditionally, store employees travel each aisle, noting the number and location of depleted or missing items. They gather new inventory from a backroom storage area, then travel each aisle again, replenishing low stock with new inventory. Depending on the store, this process can take dozens of employees and many hours to complete. Often, restocking must be done after a store has closed or late at night. This can leave shelves understocked for long periods during business hours. Additionally, the process can require additional employees working an overnight shift to complete restocking before the opening of the store the next day.
While employees are restocking inventory on shelves, they often must concurrently perform quality assurance checks. Employees ensure that all items are properly located, returning moved and misplaced items to their appropriate areas. Often, this means traveling the entire store in search of misplaced items and subsequently placing the misplaced items in their correct locations. Additionally, employees must also ensure that items are displayed neatly, with price tags and labels visible. Employees also frequently need to make sure that any pricing information displayed is correct. Often, this means checking item prices against periodic or special sales lists and amending incorrect displays. Furthermore, this method of pricing is not dynamic, as it is difficult for retail stores to adjust prices quickly based on supply and demand.
Additionally, many franchise or branch stores are required to stock and display products in a manner determined by a corporate office. Such information is usually displayed in the form of a planogram: a diagram that indicates the placement of products on a shelf and in a store. Planogram compliance can be inaccurate for a number of reasons, including human error in reading the diagram, differences in store layout, inattention to placement details, and changes in product packaging. However, planogram compliance is important to ensure consistency between stores and to present products for sale according to a chosen strategic plan. If stores do not stock and display products accurately, the data upon which corporate offices analyze sales and create strategic placement plans is likely to be inaccurate.
Current solutions to these problems utilize inventory management software, point of sale systems, and tracking devices to manage inventory. However, the implementation of these solutions is largely dependent on data supplied by humans. This data can be inconvenient to collect, time-consuming to gather, and inaccurate. Some solutions include robotic inventory scanners that can be directed down aisles and around shelves in order to electronically manage inventory. However, these robotic scanners may include costly hardware, and may not be financially feasible for many proprietors.
Additionally, radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has been used in certain situations, but accurate positioning of passive RFID tags has historically been a difficult problem to solve due to environmentally-induced sensor noise and inconsistency of sensor data.
Thus, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the industry to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.